


Hidden treasure

by SharpestRose



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:36:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They can't drain everything away all at once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden treasure

They can't drain everything away all at once.

I'm sure that if it were possible to do, it would be done, but they're just not capable of it. Dementors just can't absorb all the pleasing thoughts that a human brain has stored up inside. It would probably kill them, burst them from the inside like that cream puff James invented which would explode if you commented on how delicious it looked. We learnt the trick fast, and he got rather put out when we gobbled up stacks of them without so much as a singed eyebrow. I lost that memory before the first month was out.

I remembered James, and Lily, because the pain of their deaths was the worst memory I had, and once the dementors discovered this they replayed it time and time again. James, Lily, gone, gone. Peter, turncoat, Judas, Wormtail, in Azkaban I never had a moment where I wasn't reminded of him, what he had done. Traitor. I knew I was innocent, that I had to avenge proud, brave James and beautiful, graceful Lily. That gave me a lifeline, something to hold onto while the screams of the mad and the blackness of my own mind threatened to suck me under.

Sometimes, when those soul-sucking wraiths were tormenting me with the memory of Peter's little ratlike eyes at the moment I knew he was going to frame me, I could use the image as a kind of doorway. Back into earlier times, happier times. When the Potters asked me to be their baby's godfather. Laughing at our graduation ceremony, laughing so much that all the photographs were ruined because the images of us kept falling over and out of the frame with mirth. But these escape routes never worked for long before they were taken from me too, contraband substances for the prisoners of that place.

But, as I said, they can't take everything away all at once. So I saved up the best memories, knowing that I might be trapped there for many years to come. Wouldn't even think of the times when I had been most lighthearted, lest they be wrenched from my mind and swaddled in blankets of painful moments. I knew that once I got out of that place I would be free to think of all the happiness I'd ever known, but as the prospect of ever escaping was looking more and more like a fantasy, I knew I had to keep the best moments safe.

So into the locked strongbox of my head went the moment that I'd first made friends with James Potter, and the time I'd helped a timid boy pick up his books after Severus had cruelly knocked them out of his hands. Remus Lupin, his name had been, said softly. Everything about him had been soft, his clothing seemed to automatically reach that stage where it was shapeless and just pure comfort. When James and I (I let myself forget Peter's part in all the memories. He had no place in this little cache of bright moments) had revealed to Remus the wonderful new trick we'd taught ourselves so we could romp with him under the moonlight. Each of these happy memories I stored away, refusing to think of them. When I persuaded Remus to come on my motorcycle, the one and only time, his arms clutching around my waist in an iron-hard grip, his sharp chin on my shoulder, the night wind so fast around us as we raced through the air.

Every memory of him I owned, I locked away. The way his mouth would open a little when he was thinking about something that troubled him, the lines of worry that I could never make vanish completely around his eyes. His smile, oh I locked his smile away so they could never find it, even if they sent me mad I vowed to myself they would never get his smile. The time James had been in the sick bay after meeting the wrong end of a Bludger in Quidditch (we'd still beat Slytherin, so he didn't mind very much about having a few days of rest), and the two of us, just Moony and Padfoot, had run out over the wet grass, chasing the moon.

An accidental brushing of hands one day in class, and suddenly the room had smelt like rose petals. Nobody knew what had done it, of course, but to us it was understood completely. ("Do Muggles feel something like that, you suppose?" he'd once mused to me. "Sometimes their books talk about a magic happening when two people touch. Only with us" and there was that smile again "it's real magic." "Smelly magic, at that." I'd replied, and he'd laughed.)

Stolen kisses, kept secret from even our closest friends, in the quiet of midnight. Or not so secret, as the case turned out to be, for when Remus returned to his own bed it had been shortsheeted. Every one of these tiny flashes of recollection, and many more besides, I stored away. At the full moon, I'd be the only thing that could hold him to sanity. In Azkaban, I refused to use him as my shield against the dementors. They could have my mind before they could have him. The painful, dreadful thoughts of James and Lily helped me keep my reason, but I didn't think of him. I wouldn't. I couldn't bring myself to, not in that place.

But sometimes, when it got unbearable, I'd shift into the dog and let sense memory take over. Running in the dark, the bright gleam of the moon above. Smell of someone beside me, my companion hunter, my friend, my lover. Looking over at me with eyes that knew without knowing, just as I was doing. Twin howls in the silence.

And when I did that, sanity was easier to keep.


End file.
